It was the 1987 movie thriller that helpfully lent us a label – "bunny-boiler" – for any emotionally unstable thirtysomething woman with a rampant sex drive and a biological clock. But did the West End really need a stage version of this cautionary tale of corporate New York adultery, even one with such an indisputably starry cast and a real rabbit?

The consensus among today's reviewers is that no, it did not. "It's a shocker," cries Dominic Maxwell of the Times – and not in the way writer James Dearden and director Trevor Nunn intended. Dearden wanted to reinstate the ambivalence that Hollywood edited out of his original screenplay. "Fair enough," writes Maxwell – "many criticised Glenn Close's character, Alex Forrest, for being a caricature both of career women and of the mentally ill. Yet Dearden has changed all too little. He follows the original trajectory pretty much scene by scene, almost line by line. And Nunn, one of our greatest directors, has simply plonked it all on stage without suggesting that he has found a theatrical language for it all."

The Telegraph's Charles Spencer is similarly baffled: "Quite why the distinguished director Trevor Nunn has decided to direct this high-class schlock is a mystery to me … We are a long way here from his glory days with the RSC."

Pacing is the issue for Paul Taylor of the Independent: "The movie, though meretricious, is horribly compelling whereas, despite the tense flashback-structure, this worthier, more equivocal stage drama left me feeling weirdly detached throughout." Credit where credit's due, says the Guardian's Michael Billington – "the actors do all they can within the script's limits", notably the British lead Mark Bazeley, who conveys the "escalating panic and self-loathing" of the married male lead, Dan Gallagher. Maxwell agrees: "Expect to see more of Bazeley."

The women, however, have mercilessly little to work with. "Natascha McElhone makes Alex a softer and more initially hesitant figure than Glenn Close in the movie but lacks the backstory to illuminate her descent into borderline psychosis," says Billington, while Kristin Davis, in the underwritten role of Dan's wife, is "left trying to make bricks without straw." Taylor finds more to admire: "Davis is very convincing as Dan's smiley spouse, showing us the deep hurt of a woman with fertility problems at the news that her husband has impregnated a casual fling."

You wonder who thought this was good enough, writes Maxwell. "It's not that they are acting badly, more that this is all just looks such a literal attempt to put a film on stage." A plot originally accused of misogyny is still presented from Dan's point of view, notes Billington, "even more so in that, in the play, he becomes the narrator".

Charles Spencer finds something to praise in Robert Jones's "sleekly designed" set and "clever use of photographic montage". But while the show does have "a mechanical efficiency", says Billington, "no scene lasts long enough to make an emotional impact", making it an "essentially hollow experience". Not even Puccini can fill the void. "The repeated references to Madam Butterfly … seem like a doomed attempt to elevate pulp fiction to high art," says Spencer, while the Stage's Mark Shenton tweets: "I might also call Fatal Attraction cheap commercial tat, if it wasn't so palpably expensive."

Dearden has reinstated his original ending, replaced after test audiences demanded a more thrilling denouement. "I'm with the test audiences," concludes Maxwell curtly. But does the bunny get it? Well, yes and no, says Maxwell – "the transition from bunny-in-a-cage to bunny-in-a-saucepan is interrupted by a blackout, so there's no sense of danger. Indeed, from my seat at the side of the stalls, I could see the bunny still alive and well in its cage."

As Alex says to Dan: "I guess you thought you'd get away with it. Well, you can't."